I’M SORRY, DAVE. I’M AFRAID I CAN’T DO THAT: Shopify merchants left angry and confused as company goes big on AI support.

One merchant who spoke to The Logic described an “endless back and forth” with Shopify’s AI support chatbot as they struggled to get through to a human, despite paying for a service that promises round-the-clock help and a dedicated customer support representative. On Shopify’s support pages and on social media, scores of Shopify merchants have been venting about how difficult it has become to speak to a human as AI takes over.

Speaking to The Logic on condition of anonymity, former Shopify staffers said that the quality of merchant support had been deteriorating for years, adding that an over-reliance on AI was partly to blame. According to one former staffer, an early version of Shopify’s AI support chatbot seemingly made merchants so angry that developers created a feature that connected them to human help faster if they started swearing.

Shopify declined to answer specific questions about the changes to merchant support, though Ben McConaghy, the company’s director of communications, said its human support staff were “using AI to get merchants unstuck faster” and claimed “satisfaction and service levels” were “steadily climbing” as a result.

“The AI is just not there when it comes to customer support,” said Olivia Sawyer, CEO of Kush Queen, a CBD boutique. Kush Queen pays Shopify tens of thousands of dollars a year for access to 24/7 help and its own Shopify support person. She said that the level of support from Shopify had fallen sharply in recent months.

AI is cheaper and can’t actually do anything. I suspect Shopify relies on it to frustrate merchants into giving up and just accepting shoddy service. That’s basically what FedEx’s India-based call center does, albeit with human beings. How much longer they’ll have humans remains to be seen.